Library News & Events

Did you know that Shafer library offers research assistance? Undergraduates, Graduates, and faculty can all make appointments with our librarians to help them with any part of the research process, whether it's learning how to use our databases or evaluating what they've already found. Follow the QR code in the graphic below, click on the graphic, or click on this link to make an appointment today!

It's 2 a.m. and you just need one more peer reviewed article to submit to your instructor but you aren't having any luck and it feels like you're doomed. 

No need to panic, though, we've all been in your shoes (in my case it was 4am)! 

Shafer library offers access to a wide assortment of databases but the first option you'll most likely find on the library website is our OneSearch search bar. This search bar is a research tool that provides accesses ALL of our databases, journals, newspapers, books, well you get the point. OneSearch is a great place to start looking, but you might need more narrow and specialized tools like JSTOR, the Findlay book catalog, or some of our very many academic databases which you can find in the Databases list.

Here are some useful tips to make the most out of our OneSearch, and you can even use these tips on most databases as well!

• Don’t search using complete sentences, like your entire research question. Instead break your topic down into keywords.
  • So instead of “How do video games impact depression in teenagers” try-
  • Video Games AND Depression AND teenagers

• Utilize the Refine Results options on the search results page. These will help you narrow and focus your search, so you aren't sorting through too many pages of results.

  • Full Text Limiter

    • Limiting your results to full text will only return results that have the entire article attached as a pdf, html, or are available immediately by some other means ( a repository, open access journal, etc.). If you don't select this, some of the results you get may just be a citation for a book/article/other resource.
    • Peer-Reviewed/ Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals
      • Oftentimes your instructor will ask for only Peer Reviewed research articles. Unlike other resources, like newspapers or blog posts that might not be written by an expert on the topic, scholarly, peer-reviewed articles are created by experts in their fields and the resource been reviewed by others for quality and importance in their field before being approved for publication. This helps academic journals provide you with cutting-edge, reliable, and verifiable research.
    • Publication Date
      • Depending on your research topic it might also be useful to limit by publication date.
    • Resource Type
      • Many databases have more than academic journal articles, so limiting by resources you need is also useful. No need to scroll through pages of book reviews when you need only journal articles!
• Mine what you find for more resources
  • Resources in OneSearch, and our academic databases as a whole, provide you with a lot of information to help you on your search.
    • Read through provided abstracts to make sure an article is what you're looking for or see if the author(s) provided their own keywords you can use while searching. 
    • Also useful is scanning an article's bibliography for it's references. If the authors used it, maybe you can to!

If you need more help, take a look at our Research Process Library guide or visit us here in Shafer! You'll have found everything you need in no time!

Need some tips and tricks to understanding Shafer Library's OneSearch? Click on the image below to find a useful video showing you how to get the most out of our most popular academic search tool!

Announcing the new Shafer Library workshop series! These workshops are here to help you learn effective research techniques and resource evaluation skills both for your college career and your day to day life in order to become a more well-rounded and information-literate learner. Join us every 7th and 21st of the month at 2pm in the Shafer Library Learning Commons and check out our website for more information on the workshop topics.  

We are also holding a series of workshops for faculty focused on conducting and using archival research in the University archive. See below for more information.

Today we feature a slightly different resource available for student and faculty use: the Internet Archive!

Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. With a mission to "provide Universal Access to All Knowledge, the archive began in  archiving the Internet in 1996, when the internet itself was just beginning to come into its own. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral - "but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it" as the Internet Archive website says.  They do this using their Wayback Machine, which uses web crawlers to collect digital media. As a library itself, the Internet archive prioritizes book preservation and digitization. Many books published prior to 1927 are available for download, and countless modern books through its Open Library site. They also try to make their digitized books are available to people with print disabilities. They have also been recording T.V. media since 2000, and have been working on making newscasts searchable by captions since 2009.

As of today, the Internet Archive houses

• 625 billion web pages
• 38 million books and texts
• 14 million audio recordings (including 240,000 live concerts)
• 7 million videos (including 2 million Television News programs)
• 4 million images
• 790,000 software programs

You can also find video games stored on their servers! 

Also, as of October 11, 2022 the Internet Archive has launched a COVID-19 Web Archive. This archive curates web archive collections, including the Athens Regional Library System’s Athens, Georgia Area COVID-19 Response collection, New York University’s Tamiment Wagner: NYC COVID-19 Web Activism collection, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s COVID-19 Collection and more.

While a varied and incredibly useful source, the Internet Archive has had to face many battles over copyright, most recently against book publishers over issues of digital book access. 

So whether you're doing research on internet culture in 2003 or simply want to watch Nosferatu (1922), we recommend taking a trip through the Wayback Machine!

Not all research projects rely solely on scholarly journals or hefty book chapters, some require news resources which you can find in this weeks spotlight database: Access World News!

Easy access to primary sources

Provides web-based access to more than 8,000 titles from over 200 countries around the world and offers local, regional, national, international and global perspectives.  Access World News is updated daily to keep students informed of current issues and events, and it includes deep archives that provide background information on important topics, enabling students to trace an issue or event over a period of time.

Useful for assignments in all subject areas

Students can use Access World News to search all sources by keyword, browse any title by date and read their local newspaper. In addition, students studying a particular country can find articles published within and outside that country. They can also easily find different perspectives to support their position by reviewing articles from various geographic areas and sources by using the Source Location search function. It also provides special reports, hot topics (not the store), and daily headlines to give you inspiration.

Quick & easy searching

Along with the standard database search features, Access World News offers a map-based interface, through which users can select and search a single source, a group of titles across a region or all titles available through their school's collection. The map also features direct links to specific titles or areas (such as Ohio or a specific country), letting users access them quickly and easily. You can also add any articles you find to a session folder to quickly export or save them for use later.

Accessing Access World News
Access World News is available via the Shafer Library website on our Databases and Research Guide page and can instantly be accessed at Newsbank.com while on campus. Off campus access will require you to log in with UFNet username and password.

Access World News provides a helpful tutorial on using their database as well.

Access World News Recap:

Strengths:

• Large pool of news resources to pull from
• User-friendly interface

Weaknesses:

• Large pool of resources can be daunting if you have a broad topic

Recommended for: Undergraduates, Graduates, Faculty

Information courtesy of Access world news website

Happy Banned Books Week Oiler Nation!

Through September 18-24th Shafer library will be participating in the annual Banned Books Week. 

Launched in 1982 in response to a sudden increase in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries, Banned Books Week emphasizes the value of free and open access to information. It "celebrates the freedom to read and spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. For 40 years, the annual event has brought together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular. The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted for removal or restriction in libraries and schools. By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship (ALA website)."

Every year, the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) compiles a list of the Top 10 Most Challenged Books in order to inform the public about censorship in libraries and schools. The lists are based on information from media stories and voluntary reports sent to OIF from communities across the U.S.. You can find the lists going back to 2009 on the ALA website. However, the OIF has data going back to 1990 when the began recording the data.

The Top 10 lists are only glimpse at book challenges. Surveys indicate that 82-97% of book challenges – documented requests to remove materials from schools or libraries – remain unreported and receive no media.

To learn more, head on over the Banned Books Week website or the American Library Association (ALA) website.

Throughout the week, check out the #BannedBooksWeeks on twitter for participating events and libraries and to head on over the the official Banned Books Week Twitter for more facts, digital events (lectures, workshops, readings), and news.

Also be sure to stop by Shafer library to check out our displays and participate in our 'Guess the Banned Book" drawing. We will also be posting Banned Book trivia to our Twitter and Instagram throughout the week so be sure to follow!

@ShaferLibrary and shaferlibrary 

Back to school means back to researching! In this series we will be highlighting the features of some of our more unique research databases, for our students to better understand how to use them and to gain a better idea of the resources we have here at Shafer Library.

To start off our series we will be looking at the scholarly research staple, JSTOR!

JSTOR is an Online Library of Academic Research
With more than 12 million journal articles, books, and primary sources, JSTOR is a robust learning tool available for University of Findlay Students and Faculty.

Find Articles and eBooks From Leading Field of Study
Covering over 75 disciplines, JSTOR provides access to information in journals on law, history, film studies, cultural studies, evolutionary biology, and much more! It also has an 'Image search' feature!

Keep All of Your Research Together With "My Workspace"
Create your own personal workspace where you can save your JSTOR articles. Take the stress out of building your bibliography and use My Workspace to automatically generate citations--you can even include links from web content outside of JSTOR-- just be sure to double check them before you hit submit on Canvas!

Find that Metadata
Constellate, a project of JSTOR Labs, accommodates text analysis and digital humanities research by providing datasets for the journals, books, research reports, and pamphlets in the digital library. Constellate offers text mining of content from multiple platforms, built-in visualizations, an analytics lab, and text analysis tutorials.

The JSTOR Understanding Series

This is a research tool from JSTOR Labs that connects primary texts with journal articles and book chapters on JSTOR that cite those texts. Building on a previous project, Understanding Shakespeare, this beta release includes ten key works of British literature, the King James Bible, and all Shakespeare plays and sonnets. This tool can help foster closer readings and engagement with classic texts, and help students get started with analyzing and using primary sources in their own research

Accessing JSTOR
JSTOR is available via the Shafer Library website on our Databases and Research Guide page and can instantly be accessed at jstor.org while on campus. Off campus access will require you to log in with UFNet username and password.

JSTOR also offers tutorials and user support to help students learn how to efficiently and effectively use the resources they provide. Check out their student search help guide here!

JSTOR Recap

Strengths:

1. Large pool of resources from a variety of disciplines.
2. Built in ways to save citations or cite a resource.
3. Popular with students and academics.
4. Easy to use advanced search features.

Weaknesses:

1. Lots of disciplines means searches require good filter use.
2. Can take a while to get accustomed to using its search features as it isn't an EBSCO database like students may be used to.
3. No ability to search only for Peer Reviewed Articles.

Recommended for:

1. Undergraduates, Graduate students, and Faculty.